1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a CAD (Computer Aided Design) system, and more particularly, to a personal design system to which input can be simply provided for a general consumer and a personal equipment production system for actually producing an equipment having an appearance designed in the personal design system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, as a CAD system, ones for an engineer having a certain degree of skill such as a two-dimensional CAD and a three-dimensional CAD have spread. However, the production of appearance of an equipment by a conventional CAD system requires complicated operations, whereby the CAD system is difficult for a general consumer which is not a specialist to handle.
In recent years, therefore, a device so adapted as to design the appearance of an equipment on the basis of an inputted word representing a user's intention (hereinafter referred to as a sensible word) has been proposed in the design of a front door, for example (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 103347/1994).
However, the above-mentioned conventional equipment appearance design device is merely an equipment appearance design support device, and has the disadvantage in that it is difficult to construct a large-scale database required to cope with sensible words inputted by a variety of users.
Furthermore, the conventional equipment appearance design device only displays an image with respect to input of a sensible word representing a user's intention. Particularly when a user visually recognizes an equipment or the like displayed in a three-dimensional manner and desires to further input a sensible word, it is difficult for the user to suitably express an image intended by himself and herself with respect to the equipment displayed on a display screen in a three-dimensional manner. In addition, it takes long to change three-dimensional data on the basis of the inputted sensible word and display the equipment on the display screen in a three-dimensional manner, whereby it takes long to input the sensible word.
Furthermore, the above-mentioned equipment appearance design device cannot evaluate the ease of use in a certain use environment of an equipment having a designed appearance, for example, the interior and the exterior of a house, a living room and a bedroom even in the same house, and the morning and the night even in the same living room.
On the other hand, it is considered that an electronic/mechanical equipment spreading on the market is produced using the above-mentioned conventional CAD system by an engineer on the side of a producer (a corporation) manufacturing products. The electric/mechanical equipment is produced in accordance with a predetermined standard such as the taste or the physical features of a standard person. Consequently, an electronic/mechanical equipment (for example, a shape and a pattern) suiting the taste and the physical features of each user is hardly produced and sold. In recent years, with diversifying desires of users, the provision of an electronic/mechanical equipment reflecting a shape, a color and a pattern conforming to an image (sensibility) required by a user has been paid attention to.
In order to provide an electrical/mechanical equipment based on the design of an appearance conforming to an image (sensibility) required by a user, a system for producing the electronic/mechanical equipment on the basis of the design of the appearance intended by the user is required. That is, in order to satisfy the above-mentioned requirement, a system for performing a series of processing from the design of the appearance of the equipment conforming to the user's intention to the production of the electronic/mechanical equipment is required.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned prior art and has for its object to provide a personal design system which is very simple to handle and can design the appearance of an equipment suiting the sensibility and the physical features of a consumer by establishing data communication.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a personal equipment production system for producing an equipment on the basis of its appearance designed in conformity to a consumer's intention.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a personal design system capable of shortening time to input an image (sensibility) intended by a user and capable of making it easy to extract a user's intention.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a personal equipment production system for estimating facility and the like of a designed equipment, corresponding to the environment in which the equipment is used.